e of environment; for his teachings which
so delighted--or scandalised, as the case might be--the world, were
merely the expression of the dreams of his fellow-countrymen. So was
it also with the lofty thoughts of the philosopher Soloviev, the
_macabre_ tales of Dostoievsky, the realistic narratives of Gogol, or
the popular epics of Gorky and Ouspensky.

The doctrines of Marx took some strange shapes in the Russian _milieu_.
Eminently materialistic, they were there reclothed in an abstract and
dogmatic idealism--in fact, Marxism in Russia was transformed into a
religion. The highly contestable laws of material economics, which
usually reduce the chief preoccupations of life to a miserable question
of wages or an abominable class-war, there gained the status of a
veritable Messianic campaign, and the triumphant revolution, imbued
with these dogmas, strove to bring the German paradox to an end, even
against the sacred interests of patriotism. The falling away of the
working-classes and of the soldiers, which so disconcerted the world,
was really nothing but the outer effect of their inner aspirations.
Having filled out the hollow Marxian phraseology with the mystic
idealism of their own dreams, having glimpsed the sublime brotherhood
which would arise out of the destruction of the inequality of wages and
incomes, they quite logically scorned to take further part in the
struggle of the nations for independence. Of what import to them was
the question of Teutonic domination, or the political future of other
races?

It is much the same with the peasant class. The partition of the land
is their most sacred dogma, and they can scarcely imagine salvation
without it. This materialistic demand, embellished by the dream of
social equality, has become a religion. Mysticism throws round it an
aureole of divine justice, and the difficulty--or the impossibility--of
such a gigantic spoliation of individuals for the sake of a vague
ideal, has no power to deter them.

The land--so they argue--belongs to the Lord, and the unequal way in
which it is divided up cannot be according to His desire. The kingdom
of heaven cannot descend upon earth until the latter is divided among
her children, the labourers.

The far-off hope of victory faded before these more immediate dreams,
and the continuation of a war which seemed to involve their
postponement became hateful to the dreamers; while the emissaries of
Germany took advantage of t